Chapter 617: Thinking About the Same Thing

The term “cold fusion” was a very awkward term in academia because it often didn’t have any interesting connotations attached to it.

This concept was first introduced in the 1920s. Two German chemists Panis and Peters proposed in 1926 regarding the idea of nuclear fusion at room temperature. They found helium permeate the asbestos by passing hydrogen through the heated palladium asbestos. They then confirmed that the fusion reaction occurred and published the research in Nature.

Once this thesis was published, it immediately caused a huge sensation. However, it was quickly criticized by Rutherford, the then president of the Royal Society. Actually, in the follow-up experiments, the two were not able to repeat the success of the experiment. Finally, the whole incident was identified as a mistake, and Nature retracted the thesis.

The end of the 1980s was probably the most popular period of cold fusion research. During a press conference at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah, Fleischman and Pons published their latest research—which was about the continuous nuclear fusion on a palladium electrode with a special heavy water electrode machine at room temperature.

This discovery broke through the traditional impression that nuclear fusion could only be conducted at hundreds of millions of degrees of temperature. This also made controllable fusion researchers, who recently hadn’t made any significant progress, see a light at the end of the tunnel. The sensation generated by this event quickly swept across North America and the world, including Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Princeton PPPL, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and a dozen more research institutions. Even IBM’s private labs were involved in this race to chase this new kind of energy. The media referred to the research results as “a sun inside a test tube”.

However, the good times didn’t last for long. The US nuclear power giant and the University of Utah experimental team signed a cooperative research and development agreement, while the Italian Ministry of Science and Technology prioritized “cold fusion research”. The Office of the Secretary of State for Scientific Research in Belgium held a special meeting with a team of experts. Moscow University in the Soviet Union organized a world-class research team, which was ready to begin research on cold fusion… After all this initiative, it took less than a year for the cold fusion world to die down again.

This world-wide failure completely diminished the academic community’s enthusiasm for cold fusion. A few research teams were still persistently researching in this field. However, even thermonuclear fusion research had been dead for a long time, much less the unpopular cold nuclear fusion.

As of now, the attitude of the entire academic community was to put aside this field, but not completely deny its possibility. However, no one had hope of ever achieving cold fusion.

As for whether or not there was a feasible technical route…

Strictly speaking, it actually existed.

Like “sound fusion”.

However, even that didn’t sound reliable.

Sheng Xianfu left the venue and didn’t go look for Lu Zhou. Instead, he went to the Jin Ling University Institute of Acoustics.

At the end of the 1980s, all of the countries around the world tried to do research on cold fusion. China, who was closely watching the movement of the international academic community, was no exception. For example, the research team led by Professor Chen Weizhong from the Institute of Acoustics of Jin Ling University tried to research “sound fusion”, but unfortunately, he failed.

The current conclusion was that fusion was impossible, but it could emit light.

However, people were still uncertain why exactly it could emit light.

Before he could complete the blueprint, he had to seek some help from the research of his predecessors…

“The data from the cold fusion experiments more than 30 years ago?” said Professor Chen Weizhong after he listened to Sheng Xianfu’s explanation. He sneered and shook his head before saying, “You are wasting your time.”

Sheng Xianfu tried to convince the old man. “How can we know if we don’t try?”

“Try? I spent ten years of my life trying. I proved that this research path isn’t going to work, and I didn’t do all that work just so that you can try again later.” Chen Weizhong smiled and said in a sarcastic tone, “I wasted half of the institute’s budget, and I all got was a pile of useless papers. You’re asking me to let you waste more time and more state resources to do this experiment? My morals won’t allow this.”

It seemed that this old professor had completely given up on sound fusion.

But this was justified given how he had spent a decade trying to walk a path that was unfeasible. Not only had this disappointed his own career and scientific research goals, but it had also disappointed the students and researchers who helped him in his research.

However…

“I don’t think the data is useless.” Professor Sheng Xianfu stared into the old professor’s eyes and said in a serious manner, “It’s just that it hasn’t been applied yet.”

The old professor stared at Professor Sheng Xianfu for a while and didn’t say anything. He stood up slowly and left the office.

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After five minutes, the old man walked back into the office carrying an old notebook.

“The Institute of Acoustics didn’t have a large budget when I began this project. I was hoping it could make some achievements… but I failed.” Professor Chen Weizhong calmly handed this notebook that was filled with data to Sheng Xianfu. Professor Chen Weizhong looked at Sheng Xianfu and said, “If this stuff can help you even just a little, go ahead.”

If it could really help someone…

The old professor felt like he would feel better in his heart.

Sheng Xianfu took the notebook and nodded solemnly as he said, “I will use it properly.”

…

After Sheng Xianfu got the experimental data, he went back to the Jinling Institute for Advanced Study and began to sketch out the blueprint.

When he was in Southwest, he was studying plasma physics and was more engineering rather than theory-oriented. Now that he suddenly had to do research in the theoretical field, he was obviously struggling.

He hadn’t read up on a lot of things for a long time, and he had even forgotten most of it. Therefore, in addition to reading the current literature, he even had to resort to reading textbooks in order to complete his theoretical deductions.

Fortunately, these difficulties could be overcome.

It took ten days for him to both study and research at the same time. He finally finished his latest paper, “The Technical Feasibility of Achieving Fusion Reaction at a Relatively Low Temperature”. He took this paper and went to Lu Zhou’s office.

When he arrived at Lu Zhou’s office, Lu Zhou was thinking about something while staring at a piece of paper on his desk.

Sheng Xianfu gently knocked on the door. “I’m here.”

Lu Zhou didn’t stop writing. He simply said, “Yeah, what’s up?”

“I have some stuff about the miniaturization of controllable fusion… Some thoughts.” Sheng Xianfu looked at the thesis in his hand and was about to hand it over to Lu Zhou. However, he was somewhat hesitant.

“Do you not want to show it to me?”

“Not that.” Sheng Xianfu smiled awkwardly and made up his mind. He placed the thesis on the desk and said, “It’s just that… Don’t laugh at me after you read it.”

“Of course I won’t.”

Lu Zhou picked up the thesis on the table and began to carefully read it.

Time slowly passed by.

Sheng Xianfu, who was standing in front of the desk, patiently waited. He took a deep breath for the tenth time.

When Lu Zhou finally finished the thesis, he smiled and said, “You’re quite imaginative.”

Sheng Xianfu had a bitter smile on his face.

Didn’t you say you weren’t going to laugh at me?

He coughed and began to explain, “I am quite imaginative, so don’t take it seriously, I was just randomly brainstorming…”

“Don’t think you’re wrong. Academic discussions shouldn’t have the premise of right or wrong. We all can make mistakes, or we can be correct.” Lu Zhou gently placed the thesis on the table and said, “Not to mention, we thought of the same thing this time.”